Facebook is seeking European Union antitrust approval for its plan to buy WhatsApp, according to a person familiar with the company's plans.

Facebook requested the European Commission scrutinize the antitrust aspects of the $19 billion deal, said the person who asked not to be identified because the process isn't public. If a company faces a merger review in three EU countries, it can ask the Brussels-based commission to handle the case.

"Depending on where Facebook would have had to file, it may feel safer with dealing with the sophisticated, unbiased" commission merger people, Matthew Hall, a lawyer at McGuire Woods in Brussels, who isn't involved with the case, said in an e-mail.

The Facebook and WhatsApp applications' icons are displayed on a smartphone on February 20, 2014 in Rome. (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

The cash-and-stock acquisition would be the biggest by Facebook, the world's largest social network, and the most expensive for an Internet company in more than a decade. In addition to antitrust issues, the merger has sparked concerns about privacy as data-protection regulators question how the mobile-messaging startup's client data will be used.

The European Commission declined to comment on whether the deal has been notified to the regulator for approval. Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, also declined to comment.

"Imagine you have to notify in Germany, in France and in Italy," said Jose Rivas, a lawyer at Bird & Bird in Brussels. "In each country you have to do it in a different language, different procedure, different deadlines and no guarantee of non-contradictory decisions. Because imagine the Germans say 'yes,' the French say 'no' and the Italians say 'yes.'"

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"If you go to Brussels you have one language, one procedure, one deadline, one everything," Rivas said.